Earlier this month, Arkansas Children's Hospital announced it will be partnering with the Lyon College School of Dental Medicine to support patient care, clinical education and research. I spoke with Arkansas Children's Hospital President and CEO Marcy Doderer over the phone about this new partnership. She says there's huge power in the specialty of pediatric dentistry.
Doderer: Children should actually be seeking oral health care as early as their first birthday, and a pediatric dentist is also often trained a little differently to understand the unique development of a child's mouth and their teeth and their oral needs, even before they are chewing food or experiencing what we might know as traditional dental problems. The pediatric dental specialist, just like a pediatric medical specialist, have received their training not just in the unique physiology of a child, but also the developmental needs of a child. And so the advantage of really taking a child to a place for oral health care designed for and around the child is we've got all the resources to set them at ease early on. And from a psychosocial standpoint of approaching a dental visit for the very first time, but also trying to understand the unique developmental, emotional and physical needs of the child at various stages of growth and development.
Moore: So the Lyon College School of Dental Medicine is the state's first and only dental school. How quickly, from your end on the Arkansas Children's side, were you ready to reach out to them and say, how can we find ways to partner and create better access to dental care for Arkansans?
Doderer: We've actually been in conversation with Dean Dr. Burke Soffe over at the Lyon College School of Dental Medicine since before they had their first students. My first meeting with him was about the same time last year, before the first class of students had even started. From the very beginning, Arkansas Children's knew a new school training medical professionals in Arkansas was a partner we needed to seek out. It's kind of in our DNA as Arkansas Children's to seek partnerships, to find folks across our communities that we can deliver care better together. So it was a natural way to start the conversation. And then it just took a bit, as they were launching the dental school and getting things ready, for us to have a series of conversations to see what would be really meaningful for the first dental school in the state of Arkansas for training programs, for connection to patients. And then what would be most helpful to Arkansas Children's as we deliver care to these kids every day in our clinics.
Moore: Working with in-state medical education facilities, whether it's UAMS or the Alice Walton School of Medicine, is not something new to Arkansas Children's. How do you see that sort of DNA extending with Lyon College?
Doderer: That's a really good question. We do have a deep, deep history and relationship with UAMS — over 40 years of being their primary partner in delivering the great location to train the next generation of physicians. We're also a training site for innumerable schools across the state who are training other kinds of medical professionals: nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, all of those kinds of disciplines. Arkansas Children's really believes it's part of our mission to be part of the educational fabric of Arkansas so that students pursuing any kind of health care education have an opportunity to walk the halls here, experience clinical services in a pediatric environment, and particularly if they're early in their schooling or training, maybe see how wonderful it is to be part of a children's organization so they would choose to practice whatever their specialty in pediatrics. So it's a natural extension of that to join with Lyon College. The other thing is we've had the opportunity to be a site of training for dental residents who have come into the state of Arkansas, and those dental students from the past have had to train out of state and then create a separate residency program here in Arkansas. So the fact that we will now have a dental school where we can help dental students be exposed to pediatric care environments really early in their schooling, and then hopefully seek their own opportunity to become a pediatric dentist over the course of their career — it's just a natural part of who we are.
Moore: You kind of alluded to this a little bit here, but in the past, when you've worked with dental students, there's been kind of a hoop to jump through because they're coming from out of state. Are you expecting to see maybe less of a brain drain, where people who are Arkansans and want to be dentists, specifically pediatric dentists, and want to stay in Arkansas — it's going to be a lot easier for them to do that now, both through Lyon College and also through a direct line from the school to ACH?
Doderer: Exactly. How great will it be in a few years' time when we finally hear a dentist in Arkansas say, "I was raised, educated and trained here" — like no dentist has been able to say that about Arkansas in the past. And as these first students move through their clinical curriculum and out into the practice environment, we will actually have dentists who were educated and trained in Arkansas. In graduate medical education, it's been well proven that more residents stay where they do residency than leave. I think the same will play out with dental training as well. If they're from here, train here and have exposure to great practice sites here, it's a real gravitational pull for them to stay. It's also an opportunity to bring folks from out of state to experience life in Little Rock, go to school here for their dental program, train here and hopefully become a transplant to Arkansas.
Moore: Will there be a connection to the hospital in Springdale as well?
Doderer: At this time, not yet, but it is certainly part of our long-term vision. We do not have an on-site dental clinic at Arkansas Children's Northwest right now. But as we expand that hospital — we've got an $80-plus million expansion happening now — we're already looking at an opportunity to keep growing. Our commitment is that we will grow as rapidly as the community needs us to, that we are right-sized for the community of Northwest Arkansas.
Marcy Doderer is the president and CEO of Arkansas Children's Hospital.
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